Sandstorm Reviews
Sandstorm/Spindrift Reviews __TOC__ Reviews are numbered and in normal font. The responses are in bold text. Characters Admined On - Sandstorm, Spindrift Review - 12/19/2010 001 Always helpful, and adds a lot to the scenes he's part of. Offers helpful hints and advice. A+++++ seller. I mean staffer. :A - I never could figure out difference extra +s make. But glad to be of service. 002 Nice job on charstaff, way to keep the apps and requests moving. You seem like a natural fit as a staffer in general. I don't have much criticism for you specifically, but I did have a general charstaff comment. I'd just like to see a little more clarity in the guidelines on the wiki about what is and isn't acceptable. Too many times people (including me) submit a request for an upgrade or a character idea, but we're turned down for things not listed anywhere. :A - This is an on-going work in progress. We've got information from a lot of different sources to keep track up. There's also the matter of things that change depending on the current trends on the MUSH are, which may change depending on what sort of characters are being apped or overused. Often the best way to know is to ask, we don't bite!... maybe just nibble a little. 003 Sandstorm always helps out when he can as far as TP's go. He's courteous when asked about character applications and upgrade stuff. As a player, you don't want someone to tell you to chill out or to just hold on to your horses. Sandstorm's done a good job of getting back to players quickly and in a professional manner from what I hear from other players I've spoken to. Good to see Sandstorm as a part of the staff. :A - Glad to know I've made peoples' wait a little bit easier on the mind. I'm just as antsy about my own apps so I know where you guys are coming from. :D 004 Sandstorm is one of the, if not the, greatest assests this staff and community have at the moment. He's active, not only in his duties as a charstaffer but also running plots and just getting out there to roleplay with everyone. His characterizations are spot on, and he's not deterred by petty things such as stats, attacks, or abilities. Definitely easy to approach and pleasant to speak to. As far as constructive criticism goes, I'd suggest to keep tweaking the builds of characters for balance. We've come a long way from TACS first debut, but I still think we're a bit off on issue of Autobot vs Decepticon. Keep up the great work Sandstorm, I know one day you'll probably make character staff wizard! :A - By my own admittance, I'm better at 'flying by the seat of my pants' than long term planning when it comes to plots, so I prefer setting up a scene and going with it. Glad you've been enjoying them! As for TACS balancing, it's an ongoing process. When new abilities or effects or even just ideas come up we'll often find a few FCs that they fit to add them to, especially if nothing suited their unique talents or abilities. Or when we find something that looks oddly out of place, we'll look into it. 005 Sandstorm is one of those rare kinds of admins that comes once in a blue moon. He is a hard worker who constantly strives to do better as one can see from his recent dabbling in the TP department and he always has been quick to offer his help with TP related things despite not being TP staff. I think it was a blessing that the MUSH has Sandstorm as an admin. We really do need more people like him who has great integrity when it comes to decisions and endless energy to get other people motivated too. :A - Man, you guys are gonna make me blush if you keep complimenting me like that. ;) Review - 10/23/2010 001 Sandstorm is very quick about responses and is very knowledgable about a majority of if not most things regarding transformers. Almost... too knowledgable. He isn't a sentient program built by the wizards and sent to fool us into a false sense of security, is he!? TELL US THE TRUTH! ... Joking aside, he's doing a great job! n.- :A - Wrong mush for me to be a sentient program. ;) But thanks for the compliments! 002 Sandstorm is easily reachable, always willing to give the answer and more importantly FIND the answer you seek. He's also willing to admit fault in anything he does, very humble and easy going. Great to get along with, if I may compare him to other Charstaffers. He's got the drive to make the place great, and he's connected to the playerbase as well. He's out there roleplaying with the populace, not hidden away in some stuffy office snubbing his nose at people. Sandstorm is good the the mush, and he's a good staffer. If you had ten more of him, I'd say make them all staffers. :A - The other ten are in my closet MISB, how did you know?! ... I've been on MU*s with the sort of staff you describe, and I'm glad 2k5 isn't one of them. We're all still players here for fun, too. :D 003 Greetings, Sandstorm is doing a fantastic job, Approachable and ever ready to help out even with the tinyest problem. Keep up the good work. :A - I try to keep an eye on what's going on and help when I can, thanks. 004 Sandstorm is a delightful wee chappie, he is very pleasant and I hope he continues to keep his feet on the ground. :A - And thank you to you too. 005 Great job so far, keep up the good work. You're really quick and responsive which are great qualities for any charstaffer to have. This is kind of a criticism, but I'd say watch the mischans. It's really far and beyond what I've seen from anyone else...maybe just ask the other staffers for tips on how they avoid it?? As far as your charstaff/admin duties, the only thing I can say is try to keep a player's perspective. I'm sure you're hearing a lot of new info and opinions from the admin channel and all, and that's normal, but don't judge or treat players based on things you see and hear but they can't be aware of! :A - Mishans, my old nemesis. We go way back (unfortunately)! I try, but mistakes still happen... As for the sound advice, while peoples' past actions and roles do come up in this line of work, I try to keep an open mind to current activities and how they've tried to be better as well. 006 Sandstorm is amazing. He does a great job at CharStaffing, but he also stirs up RP and is polite, respectful, and un-twinky. He has fresh, cool ideas without being goofy and weird. :A - Without being goofy and weird? Do you know me? ;) Joking aside, I do keep the strange stuff OOC for a laugh if nothing else. I love helping with RP, especially people's upgrade stuff, even though it's not specifically a part of my job I know how hard it can be to set stuff up right... Just don't expect more than a few minutes planning. ;) I'm a very on-the-fly-of-the-seat-of-my-pants sort! Review - 02/23/2011 001 Well, let's see. Your center of gravity is too low, you're too round, and a mini-cassette, so all that considered, somehow you make both a great player and a great staffer. It's too bad you don't have better tastes in characters! ;) :A - What, just because I haven't made a femme this time yet, you think I have bad taste? ;D 002 Spindrift is always willing to join a scene and that's good to see. I've only had a few chances to see him RP, but it's clear the guy's got talent. He helps out with admin kinda questions when he can and that's good to see as well. Apps are getting reviewed in a timely matter it seems so I don't really have any complaints right now. :A - If 'Being a Big TF Nerd with Too Much Time on his Hands' counts as a talent, then I guess I do. Thanks!... I think. ;) Glad to see people are comfortable with me being here. 003 Spindrift is the glue that binds the place together. Not only does he fulfill his role as Charstaffer numero dos, but he's out there interacting with the populace on a daily basis. The public face for all staffers, he does an excellent job at being fun AND professional. He's participating and running scenes, keeping the place alive. A lot of staffers could take a page out of this guy's playbook! :A - Just doing my job, eyup. Okay, and I'm here to have fun too. I've never been a subscriber to the idea that admin sit out just running the game. We're here to enjoy what we've created just like everyone else. Review - 04/24/2011 001 Very friendly, glad to have him aboard! Professional and direct. :A - Thank you. 002 Spinny was helpful in working out the build of a new character and helping me with my math - nice one mate =D. He's also great fun to RP with =D :A - Glad to have helped and glad you're enjoying your new characer. 003 Spindrift has been quite satisfactory so far! He's been very reasonable with upgrades and character ideas, making good suggestions, being patient with questions, and offering very palatable corrections to early drafts. He is a boon to the charstaff and the game overall. :A - I try my best to give suggestions and alternatives when possible. Just being told 'No' is neither fun or very constructive to you, the apper. We try to work with getting your ideas into a playable format. 004 Spindrift=Spindrift is a cool guy and he's fun to go on bike rides and look at rainbows with. I hope he will give me his hand in holy matrimony. While this happens, he's actually a pretty decent charstaffer and is friendly and approachable and supportive of good character concepts. He makes a good person to pair with redshift who seems more stringent and togeather the two of them kind of balance each other out because I think he might be a little too lenient. Spindrift needs to step up and put his foot down when people are being stupid on channels and other crap because I mostly see other admin doing this for him and then him playing support role to them. :A - I won't deny that at times I can be more lenient and 'oh this looks cool', but I don't necessarily consider it a problem, either. This is why we double-check concepts with other staffers and have wizard approvals on some of the more questionable ideas and abilities. 005 Spindrif is cool. Spindrift is really cool. He was a little scare a while back, but I'm glad to see that he's bouncing around now and helping out with his usual duties. His RP is good as usual and he's always willing to join a scene. Never hurts to promote more characters on 26. :A - Yeah there was a bit there I was feeling ill and literally under the weather, and I wasn't rolling around on a regular basis even if I was on admin-wise. But I bounced back. 006 Spindrift does a good job working as Charstaff but it does seem that upgrades aren't nearly being processed as fast as they could be. We know that staffs are only volunteering their time and shouldn't be expected to handle things every single moment of the day but waiting over a week and still not hearing a reply on these things is kind of rough too. Other than that though I think Spindrift is an excellent staffer and a valuable asset to the MUSH. We'd be in worser shape without him, so I'm grateful that he's around. You're still awesome! :A - Like I just said, being sick sucks. And it happened to occur at the same time Redshift was occupied with school stuff, so things slowed down a little. I'm not going to try and claim it didn't happen, but just move on and try to do better! 007 Spindrift is a monumental asset to this game, community, and atmosphere. Obviously not concerned about being the biggest slugger in a room, he still manages to captivate and steal the spotlight with his funny antics and humor. For that alone, we owe you great gratitude. It's no secret that TPstaff is hurting for active scene runners, and even with your CStaff position you manage to accomodate. Great job! :A - This one is sorta big, so I'm going to likewise answer it in parts. First off, thanks for the compliments! I'm glad people enjoy playing with me regardless if I'm spotlight or just a supporting player in the story. :) But with an accolade, I'm afraid I'll have to call you guys out on some missteps. Namely, the upgrade and application wait times. Yes, there are only two of you. So why in the face of piled up apps and upgrades, aren't you actively recruiting help from fellow staffers or for new CStaff itself? You yourself were only trained to cover for him when he left for the birth of his baby, so will it take another emergency to get new CStaff? It's very frustrating to be waiting on replies, when you can see the staffers chatting it up on channels, playing PC games, or just lack of activity in general. If you say you're going to be gone or busy for a bit, I understand. But please look at it from the other side of the coin, it's not terribly fun to patiently await reply when those things are going on. :A - Like I said up above, things slowed down while Redshift was busy with real life stuff and school and I wasn't feeling all up to snuff. Sometimes the land of reality just butts its ugly head into things and we have to just roll with it. That said, hiring new people is the territory of the wizards, I'm just here to crunch numbers and push papers that come across my figurative desk staff-wise. n.n; Last of my scruples, is announced closings. It seems DFC characters can be either handed out with abandon, or a closing date is set. Can we please get some consistency? Elita One and Hot Spot were both taken without a closing date set. If it's a case of inactivity, we had a Hot Spot more recently than we had a Blaster. :A - This on the other hand I can answer readily! You see, DFCs stand on a line of sorts between FC and EFC, and of varying degrees of importance, power, and how well known they are. In general we try to keep closing dates to the really ICly important and powerful characters, so if a DFC gets a closing goes by a case by case basis. :To use the topic brought up as an example: Blaster is both a fairly important character ICly, and a rather well-know and popular one with the fandom. Such 'faces' of the theme, characters it can be well-known and defined by are often given closing dates because of their overall popularity giving them a chance of drawing in other appers. :In comparison, gestalt team leaders are important to their group, but in most cases not a big shaker in the faction itself unless someone has RPed them to earn a higher ranking. Technically you don't even need the leader character anymore to combine, just three present members. Unless they are unusually powerful otherwise, or when they were first introduces (such as Snaptrap when the Seacons were brought back) they're not likely to get a closing date. :Likewise, while Elita-One holds a somewhat important position ICly as the defacto Femme leader and geurilla tactics expert, she's relatively unknown compared to the other characters OOCly, and hasn't had a true player in over two years. There's just not enough interest in the character to warrant a closing date. Review - 06/26/2011 001 So, do admin post responses to reviews anymore, or is that a lost art? I ask this in this space because I really have nothing to say personally about you, Spindrift, other than it seems that the MUSH is more active when you're active -- which is a good indicator of your abilities. MOAR. The end. - Durango :'A - I think this answers your question in itself doesn't it? ;) We still do it, it just sometimes gets pushed aside by life and other things before we get around to it. And thanks. 002 I haven't seen Spindrift around as much as I used to in the past. Blame it on the summer, school being out, people getting busy, whatever. He's done a good job in the past with his charstaff duties and I expect he'll get back and more active eventually. :'A - RL Workload really kicked my butt for a few weeks, and even with a holiday break in the middle of it I was run down and disinterested in doing much. Thank Primus that's over with! 003 Spindrift is a godsend to this game, and with any luck he'll be running the show when Redshift takes off. :'A - Hopefully not for a while! Redshift still has plenty to give to the mush, I'm in no hurry to take over. 004 Life happens and sometimes it can take you on a long long loop. It'll be great to have you back once you've managed to settle down from the rollercoaster ride that life's putting you through. Hang tight in the mean time. :'A - Pretty much sums up the last two weeks, yup. But its nice knowing people out there were rooting for me. 005 You're still doing a great job as charstaff and all around admin. I love your enthusiasm and positive attitude. Very supportive of new players and old. I understand that you're times a little limited these days, but honestly you do such a good job that even spending a little time here you are able to make a big impact. I don't have much criticism for you specifically, I would recommend that you try to rotate FCs more. It's something that I wish more people would do, as long as this doesn't increase charstaff workload to unmanageable levels. Anyway, keep up the good work! :'''A - Thanks for the appreciations! What FCs to have or not have has always been an ongoing matter, it's one of the many reasons we introduced the Unlisted FC policy, which has been fairly popular. Not that we still aren't adding something new now and then. Take a look at the Clones and the Duocons. Category:OOC Category:Reviews